Pressure on Hill builds for gas exports to counter Vladimir Putin

Momentum is building in Congress to wield the United States’ vast natural gas resources to break Vladimir Putin’s energy stranglehold over Ukraine — although some lawmakers acknowledged their efforts would have no immediate impact on the crisis in Crimea.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) introduced bills Wednesday to make it easier to export natural gas to countries including Ukraine, and the House Energy and Commerce Committee is working on its own legislation. Meanwhile, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) is seeking new momentum for a bill he introduced last year that would give Ukraine, Japan and NATO members the same preferential access to U.S. gas as countries that have free-trade agreements with the United States.

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“If there is a piece of legislation on the floor, we’ll try to attach it because it is directly related to what’s happening in the Ukraine,” Barrasso said. Similarly, Poe will try to attach a gas-export amendment Thursday to a House resolution condemning Russia’s incursions on Ukrainian sovereignty.

The legislation builds on days of pleas from lawmakers in both parties, including House Speaker John Boehner, for the Obama administration to unleash energy exports as a wedge against Russia, which supplies 30 percent of Europe’s natural gas using pipelines that largely run through Ukraine.

“We should not force our allies to remain dependent on Putin for their energy needs,” Boehner said this week.

Even if the pressure from Congress prods the Energy Department to move faster, the practical effect anytime soon would be nil. The U.S. has no currently operating plants that could ship liquefied natural gas overseas, and probably won’t until late 2015 at the earliest. And Ukraine has no plants that could convert the liquid fuel back into gas for use in furnaces or power plants.

Still, lawmakers are seizing on gas exports as a way to blunt one of Putin’s big strategic advantages.

Russia’s control of the gas pipelines gives it the ability to shut off the gas to Ukraine, as it has done twice during earlier disputes in the past decade. Even the potential for interruptions serves as a reason for other European countries to hold back on supporting tough economic sanctions against Russia.

On the other side, the shale gas boom of the past few years has turned the U.S. into the world’s biggest natural gas producer. And over the long term, policy experts say, the availability of U.S. gas exports could indeed weaken Russia’s leverage, as could the possibility of other European countries tapping their own shale resources using fracking.

The crisis has “definitely raised the issue again,” House Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) said.

Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told POLITICO he’s open to consulting with Congress on the issue, but he stressed that the U.S. doesn’t have the capacity to flood Europe with gas. “The fact is it’s just physically not going to happen,” he said Wednesday.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) acknowledged as much. While gas exports could provide long-term help, she said she is talking to Senate Foreign Relations Committee leaders about how energy can play a more immediate role in an upcoming Ukrainian aid package.

“I think we need to be honest in our abilities as to what we can do right now,” she said. “The situation with Ukraine is immediate.”

Other lawmakers are seizing on the crisis to raise the profile of a gas-export debate that had already been simmering on the Hill.

On Wednesday, Poe introduced a bill that would force the Energy Department to speed up its approval of natural gas exports to Ukraine, along with all other former Soviet nations and the European Union. A day earlier, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) introduced a bill to expedite natural gas export permits to World Trade Organization countries.

Udall’s bill would similarly “expand energy firms’ access to World Trade Organization countries like Ukraine, Japan and India,” his office said Wednesday night.